Thomas Carnacki
Thomas Carnacki was one of the most prominent occult detectives during the early twentieth century. He was ably assisted by his colleagues, Tobias Taylor, Jack Arkwright, Harry Jessop and Charles Dodgson. Thomas Carnacki is perhaps the most baffling figures of the early twentieth century psychic scene; a man with no apparent reason for involvement in supernatural affairs, who scorned most aspects of psychic research, but nevertheless dedicated his life to its study, who was afraid of the Ab-natural but continued to risk his life and soul investigating it, while remaining so isolated that he was unknown to most of his contemporaries. He seems to have had few interests outside his work, apart from some knowledge of billiards, gastronomy and bibliography; he did indeed collect pipes, but does not seem to have been interested in Toby jugs. Were it not for a few moments of fame, his friendship with the author Dodgson, and his importance in the history of the Ab-natural, it is likely that he would now be forgotten. Early Life Thomas Carnacki was born in 1872, the only child of Ivan Carnacki, a Russian emigre, and Alice Carnacki (nee Wells), a schoolmistress. The name Carnacki was almost certainly assumed; it isn't a normal Russian name, and there is no record of Ivan prior to 1864, when he would have been in his early twenties. Their marriage licence implies that he was a Catholic, then somewhat persecuted in Russia; since Alice was a member of the Church of England, their marriage was a civil ceremony. Ivan was euphemistically known as a "confidential agent"; in practice he acted as a translator, spy and messenger for the Foreign and Colonial Office, and was its liaison with several factions in Russia. These activities were covered by involvement in a London-based fur company, which gave him legitimate reasons to visit Russia. He also seems to have used his access to sensitive information, especially items related to currency fluctuations and trade, to make some extremely successful investments. Ivan's business was potentially dangerous, especially when it took him abroad, but his death was entirely accidental. In 1879 he travelled to Scotland to clear up some minor complications in the delivery of a consignment of sable pelts, and was a victim of the Tay railway bridge disaster. He left Alice and Thomas a comfortable income from his investments, ironically including a large portfolio of railway shares. Alice promptly moved from the East End of London to a genteel home near Regents Park, and settled down to life as a wealthy widow. Thomas was initially educated by tutors, then attended the nearby Philological School (later St. Marylebone Grammar School; now closed) from 1883 to 1890. The school then specialised in ancient languages and history, and Thomas easily won a scholarship to Queens College, Oxford, where he studied Greats (Greek, Latin and philosophy), eventually achieving a comfortable First. He also seems to have begun his lifetime study of the occult and supernatural; Bodleian Library records show him as a frequent reader of related incunabula (early books), such as the Sigsand Manuscript. There is nothing to indicate why he suddenly developed this interest; there is no evidence of any contact with Ab-natural phenomena at the time, although his letters suggest that he experienced something soon after graduation. Contemporaries rarely mention him in accounts of their college days; he achieved no sporting distinctions and only joined one society, becoming treasurer of the photographic club, 1892-3. With these exceptions, he might almost have been an invisible man. He returned to London in 1894 and began to manage the family business interests, while developing contacts in scientific and supernatural affairs. The few letters that survive from this period give the impression of an earnest enquirer and hint at some personal (and possibly traumatic) experience of the Ab-natural, which is unfortunately never detailed. In August 1895 the lease on the Regents Park house ended, and Carnacki's mother decided to move to Appledorn, on the South Coast. He accompanied her, and there experienced his earliest documented encounter with the supernatural in 1897. His report of this case notes that "my experience of what I might term 'curious' things was very small at that time.", but he was being characteristically modest; the police already knew him as someone to take seriously. The case was solved in circumstances which made it desirable to leave the house, so they returned to London and a new home at 472 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, a large Georgian house on the Thames embankment. Psychic Investigation In 1902 Mrs. Carnacki met Forrest Jones, an American widower. They found that they had much in common and married in 1904, moving to New York after the wedding. Thomas stayed in London. By now he was regularly involved in psychic investigations; he used the rooms freed by his mother's departure to set up an unusual laboratory equipped for a wide range of experiments, and began to design such devices as the electric pentacle. The Steeple Monster Case In February 1905 several witnesses reported seeing a strange glowing light moving around the steeple of the church of an isolated Irish village. The following morning one of the village pensioners was found dead in the snow; the cause of death was apparently cold. The same light was seen six days later, and another villager was found dead the next day. Oddly, neither villager had any apparent reason to go outdoors, and neither was dressed for the weather. Fearing that his church was haunted, the priest conducted an exorcism; a week later there was a third death, and the priest requested Carnacki's help. Carnacki established that the first and third victims were senile, the second was feeble-minded and "easily led". It seemed possible that whatever killed them was somehow overcoming their intelligence and controlling their minds. Accordingly, he asked the priest to identify the next likely victims on this basis. There were two strong candidates; a boy who was considered to be "touched" and another senile woman. Carnacki arranged to have both moved to a cottage with a clear view of the church, and mounted a series of overnight vigils with the priest and the district nurse in attendance. On the fourth night the glow was seen again, and the boy began to leave the cottage, without dressing. Carnacki and the priest stopped him and quickly realised that he seemed to be in a hypnotic trance. Questioning revealed that he was being called by "a lady", and wanted to go to her. He was unable to explain who the "lady" was, or why he had to obey her. Carnacki decided that the best way to solve the case was to allow the boy to go, but keep him warm and in sight at all times. The boy was dressed then released and immediately started to walk towards the church, with Carnacki and the priest in his wake. Once inside, the boy started to climb the belfry, again followed by Carnacki and the vicar. In the steeple they found a glowing ball of light, roughly the size of a grapefruit, which started to move towards the boy. Carnacki and the priest tried to block it, but it easily dodged them and moved into the boy's head. He immediately started to speak in tongues, then settled into a form of Gaelic; the priest listened for a while, then conducted another exorcism which (Carnacki later noted) "for sheer speed and desperation would take a lot of beating." It appears to have been successful. Subsequently the priest refused to answer questions about his conversation with the "spirit", and Carnacki claimed that he had not understood it. The boy couldn't remember anything. The case was reported widely in the Irish press, but this anticlimactic conclusion meant that it received little publicity elsewhere. The Black Veil Case This is the best-documented and most tragic of the "lost" cases. In November 1906 Carnacki was asked to investigate a suburban haunting, an unusual incident in which a modern mansion in the village of Chalfont St. Giles, on the outskirts of London, was haunted only months after it was built. Witnesses described a pall of darkness, moving around an unoccupied bedroom, which slowly grew larger, darker and colder as the weeks went by. When the family dog was found dead, the occupants sought help. At the time Carnacki was working with Dr. Gerald Aster, a physicist who believed that ghosts were mobile electromagnetic fields. After several days they had found no evidence of any trickery; caged mice and canaries that were left in the room died overnight, and timed photographs showed dark patches which did not appear to be any form of smoke, vapour, or cloth. They felt that they had found a genuine case and determined to take a closer look. Carnacki had recently reviewed some old manuscripts relating to magical protection, and proposed spending the night in the room inside a pentacle. The owner of the house and two servants decided to join him, but Aster felt that use of a pentacle was a throwback to pagan superstition and witchcraft, and refused to participate. Instead he erected a copper mesh Faraday cage, which he believed would keep out any electromagnetic entity. It was worse than useless; when the haunting eventually began, at about three in the morning, the ghost proved to be a powerful Aeiirii manifestation, an amorphous black mist which promptly moved into the cage and attacked Aster. In the dark Aster couldn't find his way out of the cage and was engulfed before the others were fully aware of his peril. In the dim light Carnacki and the others saw him clawing at his own eyes, and heard him screaming uncontrollably. They spent the rest of the night trapped in the pentacle, while the ghost made a series of attempts to break through its protection. In the morning Aster was alive and unconscious, but his eyes were bleeding empty sockets. He died a few hours later. Naturally this lead to an inquest, and the Coroner was unable to accept the involvement of Ab-natural forces. He preferred to believe that Aster had died of heart failure, following a hysterical fit brought about by apprehension and Carnacki's suggestion; in other words, that Carnacki had literally frightened him to death. Fortunately witnesses were able to confirm that Carnacki had not spoken to Aster for more than an hour before his fit, and the final verdict was death by natural causes. Nevertheless the Coroner's criticism of Carnacki was damaging; Aster's family sued him and there was an expensive out of court settlement. The haunting continued for some weeks, then an "accidental" fire destroyed that wing of the house. It seems likely that Carnacki arranged the incident, with the blessings of the owner; he and his servants seem to have been unusually well prepared for a blaze, which led to difficulties with the subsequent insurance claim. During the subsequent rebuilding an old stone barrow (which had been buried during the foundation work) was excavated, and the remains it contained were carefully cremated. There was no repetition of the haunting. Subsequently Carnacki decided to work alone, although he did occasionally recruit outside help when he could be sure that everyone involved would follow his instructions; in at least one case this was optimistic. Aster's death and the resultant publicity marked the start of Carnacki's busiest period, but one that is unfortunately poorly documented. While he was an obsessive record keeper, it is certain that he destroyed many files at the start of the First World War. The Moving Fur Case This case indirectly involved Carnacki's father, Ivan Carnacki. Until his death Ivan was senior partner in Carnacki, Jones and Kelly, a Whitechapel fur trading company. In 1907 Carnacki was contacted by Adam Kelly, now the owner of the company, and asked to look into some mysterious problems at their workshops. Furriers arriving in the morning repeatedly found that their work had been ripped apart overnight, the stitches between the individual pelts broken by enormous force and the pelts scattered around the workroom. At first theft was suspected, but nothing was missing and in any case the building was always left locked and barred, with a night-watchman on patrol outside. Carnacki conducted his usual tests and proved that no human intruder was tampering with the furs. He used a roll-film camera set up with a clockwork timer and film winder to take photographs at hourly intervals; they showed that the furs were moved between two and three in the morning. Once he had seen the photographs, Carnacki decided to spend a night in the room, using a chalk pentacle with hair-circle and candles for protection; he had not yet invented the electric pentacle, and did not then use holy water in the protection. Shortly after midnight he began to hear a tearing noise, and the furs on a nearby bench started to move and bunch together, gradually forming the shape of a gigantic wolf. At first it ignored Carnacki, but suddenly it sprang at the pentacle. Although it could not cross the hair circle, it came sufficiently close to knock over some of the candles before it was repelled. Carnacki failed to notice that some of the melting wax had spattered onto the chalked pentacle, breaking one of the lines. On its next approach it was not repelled, and began to attack Carnacki. Fortunately its attack was confined to a physical assault, and the heads and claws of the pelts had already been removed. The creature's "bite" was softened by the fur; even so, it came close to crushing his throat, and broke his arm and four of his ribs. Luckily they rolled onto the candles during the fight, setting some of the furs on fire, and the apparition was momentarily distracted. Carnacki made a break for the door and managed to get outside before the ghost reached him. Fortunately it was stopped by the door. Once his injuries had been treated, Carnacki returned to the workshop and, over the course of several nights, established that the effect was centred on one of the pelts, a large grey wolf-skin. The method he used is interesting; Carnacki had the pelts split into four piles and placed in separate rooms, then eliminated the three rooms in which the furs were not disturbed. He repeated this procedure until only one fur was left, then had it incinerated. After this the haunting ended. Carnacki was able to trace the skin to a shipment from Siberia, but beyond that there was no evidence of origin. It seemed in all respects to be a normal wolf-skin, slightly larger and finer than usual. It had been tanned and treated like any other pelt. Although this case involved the apparent animation of non-living objects, Carnacki recorded it as a strong Aeiirrii manifestation. The pelts were moved by the power of the ghost, but were not "infected"; their animation ceased as soon as they were removed from the room containing the wolf-skin. The force was not able to escape the confines of the work-room and would have been stopped by Carnacki's pentacle if it had been complete. Fortunately partial records of most of these cases are still available, and what is known of them is described in more detail in section 3.1; since Carnacki was involved in another five cases in 1909-10, an apparently typical year, there is every reason to believe that many more are missing from this list. The Grey Dog Case This case was in many ways a classic example of a genuine haunting, by a Saiitii manifestation in the form of a monstrous hound. At irregular intervals the "Grey Dog" was seen in the courtyard of the Purfleet Lunatic Asylum, on the outskirts of London, its appearance always coinciding with the death of one of the inmates, or someone living nearby. Initially, shortly before the turn of the century, it was seen as a vague shadowy figure; later it seemed to become darker, more solid, and more menacing, and began to leave tracks. Carnacki was called in when it mauled one of the children of the asylum's superintendent, in December 1909. Fortunately a guard heard the disturbance and rushed to the rescue; he was also bitten, but saved the child and fought off the hound while fleeing into the building. The hound was stopped by the door. The wounds were undoubtedly left by a gigantic dog's bite, but contained no traces of saliva; instead, they seemed to be full of earth. The child was too young to answer questions, but the guard claimed that the dog was larger than any hound he'd seen and that every part of it, even the teeth, was dull grey or black. For several days Carnacki set up cameras and traps in the early evening, then retreated to watch the courtyard from an unoccupied cell. The weather was poor and it was usually dark soon after he had completed his preparations. Eleven days after the attack one of the inmates escaped from his cell, wandered out into the courtyard, and began to break Carnacki's carefully arranged ribbons and threads. The patient was harmless, but it took some time to capture him and repair the damage. As Carnacki was putting a new plate into the last camera, he felt a strong "mental warning", dropped the plate, and sprinted for the nearest door. As it shut behind him, it shook from the impact of a gigantic form crashing into the wood. In the morning Carnacki found deep parallel scratches in the door and a gigantic dog's footprints in the courtyard. The photograph was lost, but Carnacki's system of threads, ribbons and wafers was effective. It was apparent that the creature had somehow formed from the earth of a flower bed in a corner of the courtyard, and had returned there at the end of its attack. On this evidence it seemed likely that it was a Saiitii manifestation, which ruled out an attempt to stay in the courtyard overnight. Despite several more days of observation, Carnacki never really saw the dog; it appeared twice and left more prints, but always avoided the light. Eventually he decided to have the bed dug up and the soil incinerated. While doing so, workmen found the bones of two cats and a number of birds, rats and mice, which were also burned. This ended the haunting. Old records revealed that the former inmates included a murderer named Renfield, a psychopath who tortured, killed and ate animals when he could not reach human prey. He lured birds and other strays to his cell and killed them. A guard eventually remembered that they were subsequently buried in the flower bed. Renfield died in 1897, after hurling himself at the cell walls and floor so violently that his back was broken. Carnacki theorised that some psychic residue of the man's madness clung to the bones of the tortured animals and somehow opened the way for the "Grey Dog". He suspected that the man's insanity might also have been a result of an Ab-natural influence, but this could not be proved. The Silent Garden Case This interesting haunting occurred in a monastery in Wales. The order was reclusive and the monks lived in almost complete isolation, each occupying a "cell" (actually a small stone building entered from the cloisters) with a tiny walled garden, about 16 ft square. Food was delivered to the cells through small service hatches and all communication was by notes. In 1909 it was noticed that one of the monks had not taken his daily meal. When the prior investigated, he discovered that he was dead; while repairing a chair in the cell's workshop, he had apparently slipped and cut his wrist with a chisel, and bled to death before he could attract attention. The body was cold and death had obviously occurred many hours earlier. Oddly, nobody had noticed that he was missing from the previous night's midnight mass; any absence would usually be reported to the prior, in case the monk concerned was ill. The coroner felt that the wound would not have caused instantaneous death and was surprised that the victim had been unable to reach help, so police were sent to investigate the exact circumstances. The constables found no sign of foul play, but noticed that there seemed to be an unusual silence in the cottage; even the sounds they made appeared to be dulled, and nothing from the outside was audible. The effect was most noticeable in the garden of the cell; a constable standing there could only be heard if he shouted or blew his whistle. At first they thought it was a natural acoustic effect, but the other cells were built to the same pattern and none showed this peculiarity. Once it was brought to his attention, the prior decided to investigate the possibility that it might be a miracle, and moved into the cell. Three days later he emerged, had the cell locked and sent for Carnacki. In his written instructions the prior told Carnacki that the silence seemed worse at night and was accompanied by gradual muffling of the other senses. In the cell the light simply seemed dim; in the garden there was an almost complete absence of light. The prior also noticed that his other senses seemed diminished and that he felt unusually cold and tired. He had no explanation for the effect, but was sure that there was something unholy about it. Carnacki visited the cell by day and made a few tests with thermometers, a photo-electric cell and galvanometer, and a recording phonograph and microphone. According to his senses the cell and garden were darker, colder and quieter than the rest of the building, even by day. According to his instruments they were almost identical to their neighbour. It seemed likely that some Ab-natural force was at work. The monastery's records showed that the cell (which was close to the chapel and infirmary) had customarily been allocated to elderly monks, to reduce the distance they needed to walk. The final occupant was a younger man who had happened to enter the monastery when it was the only vacant accommodation. Carnacki reasoned that the older monks might have assumed that the effect was a result of their failing faculties, and failed to realise its Ab-natural origin. The younger monk would have felt it more strongly, and might have been stupefied by the dulling of his sensations, failing to notice the injury in time to save his life. In short, Carnacki felt that the monk had been a victim of what would now be termed sensory deprivation. His apparent presence at the midnight mass was more puzzling, but could simply be an oversight by the other monks. Carnacki left a recording thermograph and other instruments in the cell for several nights, and made an exhaustive examination of the stonework, but found nothing unusual. It seemed certain that the Ab-natural effect was purely subjective, with no effect on instruments. Caged birds and mice left in the cell and garden overnight were unharmed. Eventually, having exhausted the other possibilities, Carnacki decided to risk an all-night vigil in the garden. None of the monks could accompany him because their religious duties required attendance at midnight mass. He set up a full defence, with electric pentacle, in a corner of the garden, and waited for events to unfold. As night fell Carnacki already felt that his senses were a little dull, but the glow of the electric pentacle and surrounding candles, and the faint hum of the pentacle's power supply kept up his spirits. Gradually it seemed to get darker and quieter, until the only noise he could hear was the beating of his own heart, and nothing was visible beyond the pentacle. At about midnight the darkness became total and Carnacki experienced the strange sensory "flip" described by Dodgson elsewhere SEH; he saw the darkness as a violet glow and the pentacle and candles as areas of absolute blackness. In this strange light a spectral monk walked out of the cell, crossed to the centre of the garden, and began to embrace someone who could not be seen, then turned, as if startled and was seemingly dragged back, again by unseen forces. The monk's face seemed to be in shadow throughout this vision. As the monk was pulled from view towards the cloisters, the strange reversal of sight ended, and Carnacki gradually began to see the pentacle and candles again. Carnacki tried on two more nights and saw the same vision each time. He examined the monastery's oldest records and found a possible answer in the twelfth century, when several monks were flogged and expelled from the order for immoral practices; one died from the beating and was subsequently found to be a disguised woman. She was buried in unhallowed ground. Her name was not recorded. The monastery was destroyed by fire in the seventeenth century and subsequently rebuilt to a larger plan. It seemed possible that the cell was built over her grave. Carnacki persuaded the prior to have the garden excavated, but nothing was found and the haunting continued. The prior felt that there was nothing to be gained by further investigation; he thanked Carnacki for his work and had the cell converted for use as a store house. It is still reputedly haunted, but is rarely visited, and then only by day. There is reason to believe that this type of sensory ghost, a psychic recording, draws its power from its observers. With nobody to haunt, it may gradually fade away. The Haunted Jarvee Carnacki's name was again prominent in 1911, when he was accused of partial responsibility for the wreck of the barque Jarvee. Newspaper accounts of the period initially suggested that his vibratory machine had somehow caused the destruction of the Jarvee, possibly by shaking it apart. Lloyds of London carried the ship's insurance and brought an action against him. Luckily the court did not agree; there was ample evidence of the severity of the storm, which damaged several other ships in the area. It is perhaps fortunate that Dodgson's version of the incident, based on Carnacki's anecdote, was published well after the case had been settled. An unbiased reader might conclude that Carnacki's experiment had caused the storm! Wartime Service In 1914 the First World War began. Carnacki volunteered for the army, expecting to serve in the trenches, but was instead selected for intelligence work. His eye for detail and refusal to accept the obvious led to several successes, although the slow pace of most of his investigations apparently exasperated his colleagues. For instance, it took him nearly eight months to trap a ring of German agents operating around Cork, and for much of the period Carnacki was based in an office within 50ft of the ringleader. Carnacki's war service from March 1917 onwards is still covered by the Official Secrets Act; successive governments have declined to reduce its classification and today it is almost the only mystery remaining from the First World War. It is known that he was hospitalised in Glasgow from March to June 1918, suffering from severe burns, but their cause is unknown and most medical records are missing. Unusually, no hint of the details exist in the records of other nations, such as Germany. At the end of the war he received the Distinguished Service Cross, for "sustained services to military intelligence"; no other details were recorded. Most of Carnacki's close friends were killed in the war; in particular, Dodgson was killed by enemy fire in April 1918. There is reason to believe that he was working on a biography of Carnacki at the time; unfortunately many irreplaceable papers related to this work seem to have been discarded by his wife while settling his affairs. Later life and Death Details of Carnacki's subsequent career are mainly inferred from contemporary letters and other documents. He declined an invitation to look into the Cottingley Fairies (a ludicrous fake which took in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and several other prominent spiritualists). He is known to have corresponded with Ernest Rutherford and Oliver Haddo; the latter even purchased an electric pentacle. For years he was a shadowy figure, almost unknown outside a small circle of correspondents. This period, and his life, ended in a blaze of publicity. The mystery of Carnacki's last case remains unsolved. The facts are simple. In January-April 1926 four watchmen died while guarding the safe deposit vault of a minor branch of the City and Provincial Bank. All four died alone, apparently of heart failure caused by fright; there was no sign of violence, or of any intrusion. One of the directors of the bank knew Carnacki, then aged 56, and brought the case to his attention. He spent two fruitless weeks probing the vault, checking the walls and floors for secret passages, analysing the air, and otherwise ruling out human involvement. Eventually, on May 12th 1933, he was sealed into the vault and was last seen preparing to set up a pentacle. In the morning he had vanished. The vault door was still sealed, inside as well as outside, and the walls, floor, ceiling and deposit boxes were criss-crossed with unbroken threads and ribbons. There were no signs of a disturbance. There was only one clue; one of the tubes of the electric pentacle was burned out, apparently by some powerful overload. Carnacki's disappearance caused a considerable stir, and for the first time serious scientific attention was focused on the Ab-natural. For a while it seemed that something of real consequence might emerge from their studies. These hopes were premature. For some time there had been a general decline in Ab-natural phenomena, possibly a result of the spread of electric lighting and the demolition of many older houses, which has continued to the present day. Ghosts seemed to be unusually shy, and the few events that occurred could not be verified experimentally. Gradually interest waned, and even today his work, and that of other scholars of the Ab-natural, is ignored by most mainstream scientists. Several authors suggested means for a secret escape from the vault; usually the motive discussed was a desire to cause a sensation and attract attention to the Ab-natural. The best of these works is Agatha Christie's classic novel 'Five Sides of the Question' (1930), in which Carnacki, thinly disguised as "Thomas Straki", vanishes with the aid of two clocks, three mirrors, and the collaboration of a hypnotised bank employee, having stolen diamonds worth several million pounds from a safety deposit box. The method reads well, but Christie had to change many details of vault security to make it work. Eventually Carnacki was declared dead, and his estate divided amongst various cousins. His books and other manuscripts were donated to the Bodleian Library Category:Pages Category:People Category:Occultists